People not ready for autonomous cars: BMW boss

Autonomous cars may be closer than society realises, but BMW’s global boss of sales and marketing, Ian Robertson is questioning whether people are ready for them.

The company’s first fully autonomous car will be ready for sale by 2021, but Robertson recently commented at the Geneva Motor Show that society’s acceptance of machine learning is a bigger hurdle than any technology or regulatory barriers.

“We are going to see cars becoming a lot safer, but there is going to be a mismatch for decades. The legislation around it is also very immature and we are just beginning to ask the questions ‘What If’,” Drive.com.au reports.
“Does the car have the ability to answer the life or death question? Yes it does. Are we ready for that? No we’re not. It will be limited not by the technology but by society.”

Robertson likened self-driving cars to the adoption of autopilot functionality in aeroplanes, however he acknowledges the autonomous cars issue is more complex than that faced by airlines. remove max-height on unit-wrapper (preview only)

“You can look at the aircraft industry, and they have had autopilot for a long time, but that is quite easy as you don’t tend to have people running out in front of you in the sky, or traffic lights and the such.”